Fresh Blood

If you’re the type of person who likes unfocused, general blog posts, then you will love this one!

So, what’s going on with me? First, I don’t have a computer! That sucks for anyone in general, but if you are struggling to put out the last book in an urban fantasy series, it perhaps really sucks. It’s been over a month now, and I miss having a computer a great deal. However, I just started a new job after being home with the kids all summer (read: not making money), so while I’ll hopefully have one soon, it hasn’t been able to happen yet.

Another thing: I was in two regular RPGs, and now both are on hiatus. I know this shouldn’t seem like that jarring an occurrence, but these were two people who I was very close to, and I do miss them. This happened at around the same time when I finished writing the first draft of Fresh Blood, so I also had to say goodbye to my protagonist. And for those who weren’t clear from reading above, the people I am missing are the characters I played in the games.

Thing of change the third: My older son started attending kindergarten in a public school this fall. He had previously only attended a private pre-k at his daycare. For those who don’t have kids, daycare hardly ever closes. Public school is closed all the time, for holidays I would never have off from work. In addition, daycare gets out at 6pm. Public school gets out at 2:20pm. So it was a bit of an adjustment, to say the least, with a ton of scrambling for childcare. When both parents work outside the home (and in different boroughs) and both kids attending different schools, commuting can be very difficult.

My son on the first day of kindergarten!

So in conclusion, there have been a lot of changes lately, and I am looking forward to having things calm down a bit, if that ever really happens.

Last week I finished writing Fresh Blood, the sixth and final book in the VitC series. The next day, I left for a vacation to Cape Cod. We were with family, including our two children, who are almost five and just turned one. We stayed at a house on the beach, and spent most of our time outdoors doing stuff with the kids.
My older son, buried in sand and screaming!

Me with my younger son, not buried in sand but screaming nevertheless!

At nights, after the kids were asleep, I busied myself with re-reading the entire Vampire in the City series. I wanted to take notes on the timeline, figure out what loose ends might need to be tied up, and just have it really fresh in my head for the edit of Fresh Blood. Somehow, I managed to finish the fifth book the day after we came back, and am now set to start on the second draft. While I don’t have an official release date yet, I’m thinking sometime around October 1st.

While I was re-reading my writing, some of it from about ten years ago, I was mostly struck with how much my protagonist has changed over the course of the series. In the first book she was sometimes awkward to the point of embarrassing me as I was reading it. By the last book she is much more sure of herself and proactive, instead of just reacting to the situations I put her in. Overall, I am pleased with this progression, and I hope my readers will enjoy the culmination of a series that has been very fun to write!

This should be the end of Week 4 of the minimalist game, but I am severely far behind. I am up to Day 24 I think. Not that I’m trying to make excuses, but the past week my older son had food poisoning for two days followed by false croup for two days. I was not out of his sight for more than a minute or two for all this time, because if I was, it would result in badness. Not that I’m making excuses, but I’m making excuses. Also, the holidays.

Anyway, I have given myself up until January 23rd to complete this challenge. The remaining few days are the hardest, of course, and I’m going away on vacation that day, so I do want to be done by then. That is, as much “done” as I will ever be.

This brings me to another issue that came to my attention in this struggle to embrace minimalism. Eventually, you do have to buy some stuff. For me, the first thing I really wanted was a pair of boots. Not just any boots, but $400 Frye boots. Every time I saw someone wearing boots I liked, I noticed they were of the same make. I agonized over it for days and days, and eventually gave in and visited their NYC retail store, which is only a few blocks away from my office. I was just going to look. Yeah, right. I didn’t even believe that myself.

What happened was, I went into the store and made a beeline for the pair I had wanted, thinking they would never fit my oddly shaped feet. Well, they fit. Also, they looked amazing. And felt amazing. And at that moment, I thought my life would be complete if I could just have those damn boots.

What I would like to say now is that I didn’t buy them. But that would be lying. I did buy them, and I liked them so much, I had to wear them out of the store. And then I went home and got rid of many pairs of shoes I hated to make room for these new, wonderful boots. And as I was tossing old shoes and boots into the bag for the charity bin, I noticed that they were all cheap shoes, possibly about $40 each.

One thing that really swayed me into buying the Frye boots was a coworker telling me that they would last for ten years at a minimum. The cheap shoes I was used to buying usually lasted me about a year (and that’s being generous). When you look at it that way, it’s the same price, except the boots I bought are more beautiful, well-made, and comfortable. And of course, if I’m buying one pair of boots instead of ten, that’s nine pairs of boots that aren’t cluttering up either my house or wherever they eventually end up.

The lesson here is to buy quality over quantity. I’m trying to get to the point where this is second nature to me. This weekend I went to buy a shower curtain liner, because the $2.99 one I bought last month had already ripped. I bought the $30 one that is supposedly mildew- and tear-resistant, because those are the things that usually cause me to have to replace the liner after only a few months. Because if this one lasts 12 months even, I will still have saved money in the end, as well as kept some garbage out of the landfill.

So that’s where my head is at today. I promise I’m still working on Fresh Blood, the sixth and final book of the Vampire in the City series. But more on that on another day!